Platform:  Flash (Internet Browser)

Developer: Placeable

Publisher: Newgrounds.com

Release Date: July 22, 2012

Genre: Survival Horror

Nerd Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed by Greg Mustache

I’m a big fan of horror games.  I don’t always have the nerve to actually play them, but I do support their existence, even if the survival-horror genre itself has been bitten by zombies and has yet to shake off the disease, if it ever will.  There are a lot of differing opinions on the nature of horror and what makes a game scary, and what makes a horror game different from a novel or a movie, but most agree that “atmosphere” looms at the top of that list.  It’s not an easy thing to pull off, especially not when working with limited resources, but I found this game pulled it off nicely.

Snowdrift takes the cute, familiar aesthetic of the JRPG, with sprites and tiles ala Suikoden II, and adds a subtly terrifying concept that implies, somewhere out there, a hero has failed to save the world:  The entire planet is being gradually engulfed by an amorphous darkness, inhabited by strange creatures that have no resemblance to humans and want nothing more than to kill every last one of them, save, perhaps, the very last one.

The player guides Sam, an older fellow who has managed to escape the carnage by fleeing to a remote cabin in a dense forest, and now must survive, one day at a time.  Darkness is, quite literally, the only enemy in the game: spending too much time (which, in this case, is only a few seconds) in the shadows leaves Sam exposed to the vengeful spirits of the dark, but his lantern only has so much oil, the fire consumes wood quickly, and Sam himself is not as young as he used to be.  The days are getting shorter, the blizzard is getting worse, the things are starting to creep about in the daytime, and the animals suitable for hunting only come out at night.  And God only knows what you might be vulnerable to while you sleep.

It’s been a long time since I played a survival horror game that took the survival part so seriously, demanding the careful management of Sam’s hunger, thirst, and fatigue, in order to drive the gameplay.   Add in the creepy nightmare effects, and you have a game you might not want to play in the dark.

It does have its weaknesses, most of them primarily cosmetic: Sam’s lantern has a limited number of uses but the candles and lanterns on his house never go out, he can only own as many items as he can carry despite his house being full of shelves, he can only slake his thirst at a pond that has somehow remained un-frozen rather than just melting snow.  These things don’t detract from the gameplay as much as they break the atmosphere that Snowdrift has built, but the other major flaw is, perhaps ironically, the villains, if they can be called that: they say they are “angry” and that Sam might be “different”, but never elaborate on what either of those things actually mean.   It’s such a simple concept that it begged to ask questions that, sadly, the game never answered.

For most people, that’s probably not a big deal; it’s a Flash game on Newgrounds, you can’t judge it on the same level as a game with a million-dollar budget and teams of writers to filter through.  Still, it sticks with me, because with better writing, this could be something truly great.  I’d love to see an improved remake (Hell, I’d love to make an improved remake), but I’m just as content with this slightly flawed gem as-is.